


the only heaven i'll be sent to

by alchemystique



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 05:52:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3558557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemystique/pseuds/alchemystique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She sings for the gathering behind the walls, wears a dress, smiles along as she stands on the outskirts of little groups, but she's come to realize that whatever life she might have had before, it's not the one she wants for herself now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the only heaven i'll be sent to

**Author's Note:**

> an: In which I blatantly ignore canon because killing Beth was nearly on par with killing Daryl for me, and plug her into scenarios she should have been in anyway.

_The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. - Thomas Merton_  
  


_the only heaven i’ll be sent to (is when i’m alone with you)_

She keeps close to Daryl, these days, and she knows it hurts her sister, but Beth has learned that there are some things you should dwell on and some things you just gotta move on from. 

It’s easier, with Daryl - he doesn’t fret too much over how her wrist is heeling, doesn’t corner her to talk about things they can’t change now, doesn’t press her on details or ask her questions. When it’s Beth and Daryl it’s just that, and Beth doesn’t have to try to be something she’s not.

Still. 

She goes to the party because Maggie asks her to be there. She puts on a dress, a wild, colorful thing with a long flowing skirt, and she smiles and she laughs and she drinks a little too much beer. 

And they ask her to sing, so she does, because Maggie looks a little pleading and Rick and Carl and Michonne are smiling at her like they think she needs it too.

She doesn’t expect Daryl to show up. It’s not his scene, not by a longshot, and besides that she’s barely seen him in two days, doesn’t know if he’s even inside the walls for the duration.

WIth the windows open and the room gone silent, her voice is high and bright, and the guests all sigh and smile and look at her like she’s still a child, still that little girl in the white farm house who’d never had a drop to drink and kept to curfew. 

She finishes the song to applause, and then waits until the conversation starts again to slip out the front door.

Daryl’s standing in the street, looking caught out, and his brow furrows as she leans her head against the door. She wonders if he’s been listening to her sing.

“Hey,” she says, quiet and soft, and his expression softens in the direction of a smile. 

“Hey yourself.”

She’s still buzzed from the beer, her head a a little foggy, her words a little slower, and she hops down the steps to greet him, the skirts flowing around her ankles, long hair loose and tangle free for once. He looks…not bad, really, like maybe he’s scrounged up a new collared shirt from the new clothes he refuses to wear (his vest still worn over top, and she’s glad that some things will never change), his hair kind of brushed away from his face a bit. Like he’s made an effort. 

There’s something sweet and endearingly childish about the way he scuff his foot against the pavement at her intense focus. 

“Ya look… girly,” he tells her with an exaggerated finger wiggle, eyes downcast as her skirts settle softly around her ankles, and she honestly can’t remember if he’s ever seen her in a dress. She must have worn them before, right?

“Thanks f’r noticin’,” she says with a grin, and she’s not quite sure but she thinks he might blush. “You goin’ in?”

He darts his gaze to hers, looking caught out, and she knows he must’ve been standing there for a while. “Nah,” he says, fingers clenching and unclenching by his side.

“You mind if I tag along wherever you are goin’, then? It’s, uh…kinda busy in there.”

He shrugs, shoulders lifting up sharply, but there’s a grin curling the corners of his mouth as he tilts his head down again. “If ya want.”

They fall into step quietly, his normally silent tread jarringly loud against the pavement, the music from Deanna’s house fading the farther they walk. It’s nice. Quiet, easy, the kind of silence that don’t need interruption. It’s one of her favorite things about Daryl, if she’s bein’ perfectly honest, and the number of things she likes about Daryl has been steadily growing over the last few months. Like the way he grimaces when he feels out of place and unsure of himself, the tug of his shoulder when he doesn’t want to say what’s on his mind, the way his eyes rove over a space like he’s memorizing it. The way his laugh sounds, rough and a little ragged like he doesn’t quite know how to do it proper, but he does it anyway ‘cause she makes him smile.

She likes that these are things she knows better than everyone else.

“Figured that’d be your kinda thing,” he finally mutters, tilting his head to look at her. The past few weeks she’s noticed he does that a lot more - doesn’t turn his head away when he’s talking to her, makes sure his eyes hold hers when he’s asking her something, even if it’s just ‘the hell is that?’ (she’d found a mandolin, had wandered out onto the porch to fiddle with it, humming under her breath, and he’d snuck up on her, curled himself up into the corner like he belonged there, watchin’ and listenin’, and waited til she went quiet to ask). 

“It’s kinda weird, after so long, you know? All those strangers, worrying about the color of their dress and the way the lemonade tastes? I don’t know what ta do with most of ‘em. What am I gonna do, tell ‘em how hot moonshine burns and how ta hold a crossbow?”

He smiles at that, a real, curling, teeth-showing smile, just like she’d hoped he would. “Hell, ya’d have ta know how ta hold one y’self, first, wouldn’t ya?”

She butts her shoulder happily against his, cherishing the moment, and his teasing spirit. “They have a few here, ya know. Smaller ones. Maybe if you’re not too busy…” She lets the sentence trail off. Out there, alone together, teaching her had been as much for him as it was for her. In here, with these high walls and the jobs they’ve all been assigned, it’s different. Well, most of them have jobs, anyway. Deanna doesn’t seem to know what to do with Daryl, and she’s still hesitant to give Beth anything more serious than laundry thus far. 

And she wants to  _do_  something, here, besides folding whitey tighties all day long. It feels pointless, even if most of the people here dress nice and wear clean clothes every day. There are other things she could be doing.

“Ain’t got nothin’ better ta do,” he mutters, his cheeks crinkling up as he fights another smile, and Beth glances up at him through her lashes. 

She’s disappointed when they’re interrupted a moment later by Aaron, but she follows him up the steps into the man’s house, smiles at Eric as they all settle down at the little table to eat. 

Daryl slurps at his spaghetti like he’s trying extra hard to make the couple uncomfortable, and Beth bites back her own laugh at it, her mind falling back to that moment in the funeral home when he’d dipped his fingers into a jar and licked them clean just to see her squirm.

She snorts through her nose, hides the action by taking an extra large bite of her pasta, and bites her lip when Daryl kicks at her ankle under the table a moment later. 

Later, as she watches Daryl pace the length of the garage and accept a job from Aaron, she can’t help but feel as if a final piece of the puzzle has been tucked into place. She feels like this place might be a  _home_ , for the group.

“You do know the difference between a good person and a bad person,” Aaron is saying, and Daryl looks like he wants to shrink in on himself, but he shoots Beth a serious look, one that carries the weight of a thousand things they haven’t said to each other.

They linger in the garage for a while, the three of them, until Aaron goes to check up on Eric, and Daryl turns his gaze up to meet hers. “Whad’ya think? Help me fix her up, take her for a spin? Scare the locals off the streets?”

It’s things like this that make her wonder if he realizes how close they’ve become, if he realizes how differently he speaks, how differently he acts around her when it’s just the two of them. But then she wonders if maybe he’s just waiting for her to catch up.

“Yeah, I think I’d like that,” she tells him, and his chest puffs out a bit, like he’s pleased. He’s goddamn adorable sometimes, and she hopes no one ever tells him so.

“Good. Can’t have you fallin’ off all the time if we go outside the walls on it.” He shoots her another wandering look. “Gonna have to get you outta that dress, though.”

Her eyes dart carefully to meet his, amusement sparkling in her own at the way he’d phrased the words, and despite his obvious bemused embarrassment there’s an unspoken promise in his gaze that makes her feel a little warm and tingly in a way that has nothing to do with the alcohol slowly leaving her system.

Which is of course when Aaron pokes his head around the corner, coughing discreetly, and the moment breaks. Daryl clears his throat awkwardly, waves her ahead of him as they trickle back into the house, and they say their goodbyes with a genuine sense of camaraderie. She doesn’t ask about his day, though she wonders at his sudden acceptance both of this place and of Aaron when he’s been pacing the walls like a caged animal since they got here. 

She doesn’t want the night to end, if she’s being perfectly honest, doesn’t want to say goodnight and slip up the stairs of their separate houses. Daryl lingers on the lawn, same as her, head tilted up to stare at the night sky.

“You wanna drink?” he asks, and Beth can’t fight the grin as she watches him produce two beer bottles from the depths of his pants pockets. She smiles a giddy smile at him, and then laughs bright and loud, uncareful, as he slinks up the porch stairs and slips around the side of the house, where the shadows are deep and it’s harder to see them from the street. He cracks the bottles both open with his belt loop, handing one off to her with a sly look in his eye. “Don’t tell y’r sister. She’s gonna think we’re catching a bad habit together.”

His eyes crinkle at the corners, and when Maggie finds them sharing a cigarette together hours later, Beth can’t help the giggle fit that absolutely consumes her, made worse by the shocked face Maggie gives them both when Daryl lets out his own bark of laughter a moment later.


End file.
